142 MERINO SHEEP 



considered the best, as they had a right to be; for 

 their owners were kings, nobles, and rich priests, 

 and they had the pick of the fatness of the whole 

 land, being pastured on the southern plains in 

 winter, and in the spring and summer on the then 

 fresher herbage of the mountains to the northward, 1 

 from which they returned in the fall. For the ac- 

 commodation of these four or five millions during 

 their migrations, cultivators of the intervening 

 land were obliged to leave a road, not less than 

 ninety yards wide, as well as commons for the feed- 

 ing of these flocks — a grievous burden to the hus- 

 bandman, and for which there was little or no 

 redress. A French writer says: "It was seldom 

 that proprietors of land made demands when they 

 sustained damage, thinking it better to suffer than 

 to contest, when they were assured that the ex- 

 pense would greatly exceed any compensation they 

 might recover." A Spanish writer complains in a 

 memoir addressed to his king, that "the corps of 

 junadines (the proprietors of flocks) enjoy an enor- 

 mous power, and have not only engrossed all the 

 pastures of the kingdom, but have made cultiva- 

 tors abandon their most fertile lands; thus they 

 have banished the estantes, ruined agriculture, and 

 depopulated the country." The Transhumantes 

 were in flocks of ten thousand, cared for by fifty 

 shepherds, each with a dog, and under the direc- 

 tion of a chief. Those who wish to learn more 



